


The Sun Tangled in a Tree

by JoJo



Category: The Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: 3K Round-up Challenge, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-17
Updated: 2016-09-17
Packaged: 2018-08-15 12:48:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8057029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoJo/pseuds/JoJo
Summary: Nathan, Vin and an icy-cold sunrise





	The Sun Tangled in a Tree

**Author's Note:**

> from a picture prompt by thaccian - and farad's description of it

“Nathan.”

Vin turned his stiff neck to speak. He could feel the deathly cold at his back even as the fire warmed his face and outstretched hands. Even as the dawn flared gold, banishing a night he’d thought might kill them both. 

They were camped out in the same spot they always used on the trail back from the village to town. It could be cold enough here overnight in the summer, never mind now. This trip Vin had slept his rest hours half aware of being frozen to the bone, relieved when it was his watch. 

Blankets and tarpaulin rustled in the shelter behind him, followed by silence. Vin shook his head. “Nate,” he repeated, louder, voice little more than a rasp. “Need to get moving.”

After a moment more there was a cough and more rustling. Then finally Nathan’s head appeared through a gap in the canvas, well wrapped in a muffler. From the gray, pinched look of him, he hadn’t gotten much sleep either. He dragged himself out of the shelter, the thick Seminole blanket still across his shoulders, warm breath clouding around his face in the chill air. Then he sat, slumped on the log next to Vin with his head bowed.

Vin looked straight at the beam of orange light through the net of iced-up branches, fixing on it. He heard Nathan sigh behind him. At the cold, or the prospect of a ride. Or else at thoughts of yesterday. He gave him a healthy nudge.

“Know you don’t think so, but you did good.” Vin wasn’t too accustomed to praising folk for much except good shooting since he figured half the time he didn’t know enough about other things to have an opinion. But sometimes it was needed. He and Nathan hadn’t spoken since leaving the village halfway through the afternoon yesterday, just as the mourning rituals were beginning. Mostly because Nathan, as always when he lost a patient, didn’t have the heart for it.

“Thought f’sure I’d lose ‘em all.” When Nathan spoke, it was still unwilling, his voice faint.

“Well you didn’t.”

Nathan made a noise of self-disgust. “Just the mother.”

It hurt when he said that. Such things always hurt. Vin could still smell the copper, could almost taste it.

“Weren’t nobody could’ve saved her. And those babies would’ve died too, Nathan, without you.”

Twins.

Heck, they hadn’t been expecting that when they’d pitched up two days ago with the monthly supplies. At one point yesterday morning, when everything had started to go to hell, Vin had almost told Nathan to leave it all to the women and the medicine man. To stand back and let them deal with their sudden, shocking crisis as they thought best. He was glad he hadn’t done that. The village would have been burying the three of them together most likely if he had. It had been a close run thing, though, but he’d decided to back his friend, to back modernity. Vin wasn’t used to falling down that side when the cultures clashed. But he wasn’t just a cheerleader for the native tribes, as Ezra seemed to think. Hell, he could be calculating as the damned gambler on a good day, had banked on the fact that the seven of them still had currency in the village. Especially with Nathan and Rain’s attachment, which seemed to be in favor amongst the elders. And in any case the medicine man had only needed one look at Vin’s gun, the way he stood outside the birthing tent on guard, and he’d backed right off.

“Maybe,” Nathan said after a long pause.

Vin pushed himself to his feet, knees protesting. He rested a hand on Nathan’s shoulder. The light was coming up fast now, spilling towards them.

“Like I said, you done good. And now we need to move. Something’s coming in.” He gave the shoulder a squeeze, turned to move away, boots making a shushing noise through the snow.

Nathan’s head came up, groggy with poor sleep. “Storm?”

Vin gestured at the spreading colors visible through the trees. “Looks pretty, but that sky means something all right.”

Nathan continued to look to the speaker rather than the sky. “Shelter or push on for home?”

Vin still didn’t quite think of the town and ‘home’ as the same place, but since he didn’t have any other these days... Far as he knew, homes called you back, didn’t they? Or the people in them did. Vin didn’t much care for the idea of settling, not even now. Being tied to a place had always seemed such a road to nowhere, a prospect as worrying as it was far-fetched. But he was getting used to the idea that odd things fit together. There could be beauty even when everything else seemed to have gone belly-up. A man’s wife, a mother, drained of blood and life. Two little babies, every last toe perfect. Red skies and stormy weather, the sun tangled in a tree.

Twigs cracked underfoot as he moved. 

“Home,” he said, “and it ain’t even a maybe.”

Even though there wasn’t a response, he could almost hear Nathan let go some of the pain.


End file.
